Thirty imams in France sign an open letter calling on their colleagues to help counter Muslim extremism.
The letter, which appears Tuesday in the daily LeMonde, expresses “compassion for all our fellow citizens who have been directly or indirectly affected by terrorism and by the anti-Semitic crimes that have blindly struck our country.”
It adds that the imams are “suffering from the confiscation of our religion by criminals.”
The letter is in response to a manifesto published on Sunday in LeParisien, the largest circulation newspaper in France, signed by 300 politicians, intellectuals and artists denouncing the “new anti-Semitism in France” driven by radical Islamists in the country.
The manifesto also suggests that verses of the Quran calling for the “murder and punishment of Jews, Christians and disbelievers” be removed on the grounds that they are “obsolete.”
The imams offer their “theological expertise” to help guard against radicalized Muslims. They say that Islam has fallen into the hands of “an ignorant, disrupted and idle youth. A naive youth, easy prey for ideologues who exploit this dismay.”
— JTA
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